Nights like tonight I wish I had a local OSO just to come over and snuggle with.
(I’m OK. Just feeling a bit…skin-hungry.)
Long time readers may recall that a couple of years ago, kitanzi and had undertaken the project of watching Babylon 5 for more-or-less the first time. We were moving along at a pretty good pace, and then…we moved. And the DVDs disappeared into a pile of boxes, and didn’t turn up again for quite some time. At which point we were bogged down in other things, and….well, we just didn’t get back to it.
Recently, as we were wrapping up the current TV season, I said “We really should get back to that”, so we popped the appropriate DVD in, figured out where we’d left off, and dove back into things.
I don’t have as many fresh insights on Season 2 as I did on Season 1, because of the rather disjointed way we experienced it, but…
- I like Sheridan. I like him a lot. And it looks like something more than a professional relationship is developing between him and Delenn, which will be interesting to keep an eye on. (I’m actually spoiled on this, but there’s a difference between “knowing where it goes” and “knowing how it got there”)
- We get a lot more of Kosh without actually getting to know much more about him. Kosh is fascinating because he’s one of the most successful alien characters I’ve seen at being really alien. The big reveal on him at the end of the season was quite a surprise, and we’re still not entirely sure of all the ramifications. yet.
- The Londo/G’Kar storyline is masterful. Londo becomes more tragic by the hour, and by the end even he has realised that he’s gone down a road he does not want to be on, yet cannot find his way to turn from the path. I’m wondering if Londo will be fully redeemed in the end, and what sacrifices he will have to make to achieve that.
G’Kar has his world fall, and is left stranded, stripped of all but his honour and his desire for revenge. The scene between G’Kar and Vir in the elevator, where Vir tries to apologise was a stunning bit of acting on both actors parts.
- “Comes the Inquisitor” may be my favourite single episode of Season 2. At the end of it, kitanzi and I both let out a breath and went “Whoa.” (I find it interesting, and someone in the comments of the Lurker’s guide also pointed it out, that in the finale, Kosh risks all his efforts to remain hidden, in order to save a single life, which echoed strongly against the themes of this episode.)
- The whole political situation on Earth seems eerily prescient, looking back on it from 2009 and in light of the previous Administration and their attitudes towards the war effort. We never quite got so bad as to have a Night Watch, but there’s definately some resonance.
- Really didn’t see the thing with Talia coming. That’s a whole giant can of worms, and I have a feeling that’s not the last we see of her.
We’re already nearly halfway into Season 3, because once we crested the top of the hill about episode 9 or 10 of Season 2, it’s been really hard to stop. But I’ll save my reflections on that for another time.
This is really just a random squee post. I had such a good night last night and I wanted to share.
First up was our Tuesday night raid, on which I am the Raid Leader. We got our group together neatly by first pull time, with only a couple of people to cut. (Tuesday is usually the hardest night to form, because we’ll get 32-35 people showing up. On Thursday and Sunday, when we’re wiping on stuff, suddenly people don’t turn out. Funny that. I keep lists.) We took a while to get started because we had to sort out some folks for a new strategy we were trying on Flame Leviathan, but once we got rolling it was easy city. We downed FL+2 in one with only a couple of deaths, so it was a marked improvement over the previous week. We then proceeded to knock off XT-002, which finally dropped Twisted Visage for our guild leader, Kologarn and Iron Council, each of which dropped wishlist items for folks….including me! I got the Iron-bound Mantle to replace my last piece of T7.5, and next week I’ll have the badges to get the helm and complete my 4pc bonus on T8.5.
As we were heading into IC, we got the news that the Alliance had managed to capture Lake Wintergrasp, so we downed the big trio and proceeded portal out to Dalaran to get our weekly guild clear of VoA done. The other hunter in the raid grabbed his T8.5 gloves as a result.
Though it was only 11:30, there really wasn’t time to do anything else, so we called it there. I went and got my new shoulders properly enchanted by the Son of Hodir, and checked to see what my guildies were up to. Seeing several folks in Slave Pens, I volunteered my daily Ahune summon to anyone who wanted it, and ended up duoing it with our chief ret paladin for just my one attempt (He’d just wrapped up about 4-5 attempts with someone else, who was going to bed.) We knocked him down easily and….the pet dropped, I won the roll, and I now has a Scorchling! *happy dance*
I’ve promised the pally I’ll keep going back with him in the hopes it will drop for him too. But what a great night of WoW!
I haven’t gotten around to actually writing anything about ConCertino, but I did get my photos online.
May write more later.
Following up to the concert, some musing on a specific song. On Twitter, sfeley writes:
One concert annoyance: why do people laugh and shout out during “Shop Vac?” That song is TRAGIC. It’s a tearjerker. Does nobody else get it?
Which got me to thinking about the song, and the nature of comedy…or, more specifically in this case, satire.
“Shop Vac” is a very bouncy pop tune, with a catchy sort of Fountains of Wayne vibe to it. It tells the story of a couple who has moved into their little suburban castle, with their two kids and the yard and the basement workshop and the convenient shopping nearby. But if you listen closely, its obvious that they are utterly miserable. As Steve notes, it’s a tragedy set in a pop song.
I’ve complained in the past about songs where the emotional centre of the song and the tenor of the tune felt at odds to me. Most famously, the Beatles “Ticket to Ride“, which I’ve always thought was a terribly jaunty tune for a song about losing love. (I much prefer The Carpenters’ melancholy cover.) But sometimes, the dichotomy is part of the point — it creates a dissonance between what we’re feeling and what we’re being told.
“Shop Vac” is satire, and it’s target is the American DreamTM — or at least the ideal of it presented by our current culture. The couple in the song has everything that we’re all told we’re supposed to want, but everything we’ve been told we’re supposed to want turns out in many cases to be empty and unsatisfying. Somewhere on the way to “success”, they’ve found that along the way they’ve lost their dreams. Lois McMaster Bujold expressed it best: “The one thing you cannot trade for your heart’s desire is your heart.”
So….why is this funny? For some, it may be a measure of shadenfruede, because the person laughing may think “Ah-hah, but I didn’t fall into that trap! I reject that lifestyle and all it represents!” (This is a very geek attitude, and geeks are Coulton’s primary audience.). For others, it’s the hollow laughter of recognition. Coulton is certainly not the first to mine this notion for humour. Erma Bombeck wrote a dozen best sellers by extracting comedy from the soul-crushing ennui of suburban life. In the 1960s, The Monkees had a huge hit with Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “Pleasant Valley Sunday“, which had a slightly more detached air, but lampooning the very same ideals.
This is why it’s one of my favourite Coulton songs, and why I requested it. Because it’s complex, and thought provoking, and more than meets the ear on first hearing. I don’t think that it’s funny because I don’t get it. It is funny (and tragic) because it is revealing a truth in a way that only the court jester can. Dry black humour, indeed, but humour none the less.
The last time Jonathan Coulton swung through Atlanta, I bought four tickets, expecting we could find someone to go with us. I figured if we failed to find someone free to go, I would just gift the tickets to a couple of random people standing in line (probably based on my perception of their cuteness, but that’s another show…) Unfortunately, the night the show came up, I came down with the flu and ended up unable to attend. I forwarded my tickets to thatcrazycajun, who had planned to attend, and told him to give the tickets away to anyone who wanted them, either that he knew or just to people on line.
So, as you can imagine, I was excited to learn that he was doing another show at the Variety Playhouse. sfeley asked if we wanted to join up with a big group of folks attending, so of course we said yes.
Saturday arrived, and we headed down to meet up with our party at Front Page News, a nearby restaurant. We were the first to arrive, so we set about getting a table arranged for 12, and sat down to enjoy some appetisers. It was right about then that I had a sudden horror-struck realisation. I had forgotten to print the tickets!
I did what I usually do in such situations, which is quietly panic and then look for solutions. I could drive home and get the tickets, and with no complications from traffic get back in time for the show, but that would meant missing dinner and the company that went with it, which I didn’t really want to do. A call to the theatre suggested they might be able to work something out with me, but not until we actually arrived there, which would be too late to enact a plan B should one become necessary.
So I asked our waiter, who was a rather nice young fellow, if they by any chance had an Internet capable computer and printer on the premises. He told me he would check, and came back to inform me that while his manager had one in her office, customers were not allowed into that area. However, if I were willing to give them the necessary login information, they would print my tickets for me. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I wrote down the necessary details on a piece of paper and handed them over. He returned 10 minutes later with the printouts that would get us in the door, and we gave him a 50% tip when it was time to go. The food was also excellent, and outside of heroic measures above and beyond the call of duty, the service was outstanding. I highly recommend it if you find yourself in the Little Five Points area.
Once the crisis was resolved, we were able to settle in and enjoy dinner. Present were myself and kitanzi, sfeley and afeley, rslatkin and vatavian, joyeuse13 and abovenyquist, and some folks who may be on LJ but I don’t know their handles. (Cross connecting the members of these couples to their respective poly OSOs (where appropriate) is left entirely as an exercise to the reader.)
We finished dinner, and set out to move our car to the venue’s parking lot, since we were sure the restaurant really wanted their parking back, and headed inside, where we ran into other friends and enjoyed a great deal of conversation while waiting for the show to begin. Finally, the lights went down, and Paul and Storm took the stage.
Now, I’m not unfamiliar with Paul and Storm, and had even seen them before, way back when DaVinci’s Notebook was still touring. But this is the first time I’d managed to catch their live show, and let me tell you, I laughed my ass off. “Opening Band” is *still* in my head (and I’m re-listening to it on YouTube. Thank you, YouTube), and the rest of their short set was just as entertaining. The faux-Gregorian “NunFight” song was hilarious, and the banter with the audience was rapid and witty. If you get a chance to catch these guys, don’t pass it up.
Jonathan Coulton then took the stage and was pretty much spot on all night. He played his hits, he did requests that he had solicited on Twitter (including two of mine, though I don’t know if it was *my* requests that got them onto the set list, but it made me happy anyway). One of the things I like about Coulton, both here and in every interview I’ve ever seen with him, is how utterly down to earth he is. He seems pleasantly bemused that he took a huge risk with his career and it’s actually paid off for him, and genuinely appears to love everything about what he does. It’s also a reminder that while you can do a lot of gimmicks with lighting and special effects to spice up a live show, you can still go a long way with just one guy, a guitar, and some fiendishly catchy and intelligent songs.
The show was led off with “Ikea”, my two requests were back to back (“The Future Soon” and “Shop Vac”), and of course he did all the big hits like “Skullcrusher Mountain”, “Re: Your Brains”, and “First of May”. My favourite moment of the concert may well have been his cover of Billy Joel’s “Pressure”, which was a very interesting and different interpretation and I completely want a recording of it right now. Paul and Storm joined him for a few songs, and everything was pretty much spot-on through the entire set.
At the end of the night, we staggered out into the warm night air, found our car, and drove home to fall into bed. I had an awesome time, and I don’t doubt that I will be first in line to buy tickets the next time either act comes to town.
Well, the votes came in, and I actually ended up winning the flash contest I mentioned in my last post. I’m really pleased, because this is the first complete (albeit short) fiction I’ve written in some time.
If you’re interested, the story I wrote is
Every month in its forum, Aphelion Webzine has a flash fiction contest, run by Nate Kailhofer. I’ve meant every month to try and take a run at it, but never got the right idea, but this month, I finally did.
The voting just opened and runs for a week. Anyone can vote, as long as they register on the forum. If anyone wants to participate in the judging, just click the link below.
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1327
I’m not interested in “stuffing the ballot box”, so I’m obviously not going to tell you which story is mine. So do feel free to participate.
While Andrew Sullivan is on vacation this week, he’s turned over his Atlantic Monthly blog to a series of guest writers. Today contained a post by Lane Wallace which really struck me as being tasty thoughtfood:
In the course of the past 20 years, I’ve flown small aircraft on five continents. I’ve been stranded alone on a glacier in shorts and tennis shoes. I’ve found myself in the middle of rapidly destabilizing situations in African countries. And I’ve started two businesses and navigated a career that, more often than not, has lacked a stable paycheck. Do I love all the uncertainty that comes with that? No. But I’ve learned how to survive it, and even embrace the possibilities it offers. (I’ve even written a book on the subject.) Not every lesson translates to surviving uncertainty in everyday life, but a surprising number do. A few big ones:1. Don’t panic. Self-explanatory. Panic and fear never helped anyone think their way clearly out of a tight spot.
But how do you control panic and fear?
2. Focus on the present. Fear is almost always related to something we’re afraid will or might happen in the future, not what’s actually happening in the present. In the present, we get busy with the business of coping. It’s our fears of amorphous monster threats down the road … realistic or not … that tend to paralyze us. Ask yourself, “Am I okay right now?” If the answer is yes, take a deep breath and relax a little bit. You can figure the rest out as you go.
3. Keep perspective. Ask yourself, “what’s the worst thing that happens here? Does anybody die?” Sometimes, in an adventure setting, the answer to that is yes. But that’s rarely true in everyday life. And keeping that fact in perspective helps ratchet the fear and worry down a notch or two. As long as you’re alive, you can regroup to fight another day.
4. Separate what you can’t control from what you can, and then focus on taking action on those items you can control. In an airplane, I can’t control whether the weather is going to deteriorate or something mechanical is going to break. But I can make sure I at least have enough fuel to look for a second airport, a flashlight in the cockpit in case the electrical system goes out, and a plan of what I’m going to do next if Plan A doesn’t work out.
5. Learn to prioritize what’s essential, and loadshed everything else.
6. Stay flexible. Be open to innovative options that pop up unexpectedly, or aren’t along the path you initially planned to follow. Sometimes those out-of-the-way places you end up diverting to end up way better than your original destination.
7. Remember to look at and enjoy the scenery, even when things get challenging. Few experiences are without any moments of beauty or grace. And these days … “good old” or otherwise … will pass all too quickly. You may have more money or safety down the road, but you’ll never be this young again.
Stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait? Only if we choose to be.